Many Planes Are Still Flying, Nearly Empty
nymag.com
nymag.com
I know it's not the same as a commercial airliner, but I used to teach hang gliding on the beach and we'd sometimes get a little packed sand in the back of the keel (which is the name for the central bar that the wings were mirrored across). The total weight of the student plus the glider could get up to ~280 lb, and the amount of packed sand would be less than a pound or two, but the flight characteristics of the gliders would change drastically, to the point where we could barely get them in the air.
As another commenter notes below, the few people moving around the cabin is less about control ability and safety than it is about fuel efficiency.
It is not about balance.
Moving a few people probably doesn't cause an issue if the rest of the plane is completely empty.
If you move 20 people from the right side to the left side of the plane this will probably have some kind of effect.
On smaller regional aircraft they sometimes ask people to move seats to the other side or back to front.
They rarely upgrade to international first/business because the meals and other perks cost real money. And it'll piss off the people who payed over a thousand dollars for those seats.
That's probably a mix of people with critical jobs needing to travel, people having to move for a variety of reasons, and people listening to the ignorant and ignoring the advice to social distance.
It's better for them to run highly unprofitable flights than miss their contract obligations with big corporations that want a plane available to move people transatlantic on a day's notice.
Had an empty flight with Singapore Airlines right after Christmas and they didn't.
This is British Airways so we'll see.
2. Does it cost them significantly more to seat you in a different location? I'm asking, I genuinely don't know.
Right now I'm in premium economy as for some reason the ticket was cheaper than economy.
Realstically speaking there is virtually no difference in service for them.
Assuming that I get the usual economy food and I'm really the only person on the flight.
Now, if you fly regularly and have some miles status with that airline you can request all sorts of things. The gate agent has a lot of leeway in that regard.
In online discourse it is common for people to ask questions or make statements without reading the reference material being discussed. This is frustrating to other commenters who feel that a lot of the discussion is needless and effectively off-topic. Hence the aggression in the acronym is partly a joke that this is such a common occurrence that the expletive itself is part of the acronym. It's definitely not meant to be taken personally. Mostly.
Remember they're only words... snowflakes will melt
Therefore, even people breaking lockdown (justifiably or unjustifiably) are at reduced risk of transmission if other people are obeying lockdown.
[1] https://graphics.reuters.com/CHINA-HEALTH-SOUTHKOREA-CLUSTER...
In any case, in Canada all travellers are required to self-isolate for two weeks upon arrival.
So yes, the planes are empty, but September is the timeframe to watch.
Maintenance costs are based on different schedules, there is usually a time limit (as in calendar time), a flight time limit and a cycles limit (a cycle is one take-off + landing). Which one is more limiting depends on the type of operation the plane was designed for, A long-haul plane is designed for more flight-time vs cycles, a regional jet is designed for a high cycle count. So maintenance costs will decrease if you keep them on the ground, but some components may then "time-out" which will still incur maintenance costs to bring them back to airworthy condition.
If you look at a flight-tracking site you'll notice Atlantic crossings starting at FL380 or even higher, for example now BA287 is at 40,000ft just coasting out in Ireland. That's not the normal altitude, typically we enter Oceanic airspace with an initial altitude of 35,000 or something similar with maximum possible (but not efficient) being 36ish.
Translation: I want this route, the best altitude for me is 35,000 ft and at my current weight the maximum I can climb to is 37,000 ft. That optimum altitude is calculated by the flight management system.
Since AF isn’t flying to Vancouver or Toronto anymore, whatever scraps they had are consolidated on the remaining flights.
It could be mail related: Montreal has an int’l mail centre.
If going from Africa to N. America, it’s typical to need to transfer in Paris/Brussels/London/Frankfurt
In my own case I have a flight from Singapore to London on May 30 approx with BA and I can't get to Singapore as it's closed for transit. If BA fly and I can't get there I'm not sure I can do much but if they don't fly I can probably get compensation like the EU standard 600 euro for a delayed flight. I think BA are still flying emptyish at the moment.
Compensation is due for flights cancelled within 14 days of the departure date, with an exception for extraordinary circumstances.
https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/travel/passenger-right...
Has air traffic dropped off enough to log similar changes?
I flew back from Mexico mid-March and going through the sweaty scrum unmasked felt a bit like being in Brunner's _The Sheep Look Up_.
They are now single digits. And, that's after massive amounts of reductions to flight schedules.
Boarding 10 people onto a plane with 130 seats with social distancing isn't so hard.
Similar for the ticket counters and TSA.
For example
"The number of cargo-only flights at Heathrow has surged to five times normal levels, with the airport now saying it is prioritising medical supplies as passenger travel grinds to a halt."
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/apr/14/heathrow-pas...
The surge in "cargo only" is flooding supply into a waning demand market.
There may be some that are, although this article says the flights are upto 10% full. Given the average car is only 20% full that doesn't sound a terribly low amount.
The article also says
* One reason to keep so many flights going is to help the airlines implement their policies that promote social distancing
* Some travel is essential and it’s important that people who truly need to travel by air retain a way to do it.
It then goes on to say that many of the "13 Washignton-Boston flights" will be cancelled. Indeed of the 10 arrivals currently listed on [0], 5 have been cancelled.
[0] https://www.massport.com/logan-airport/flights/flight-status...
According to wikipedia, Germany's economy (GDP $3.863T) is only about 4% of global economy (GDP $87.265T). Would you call Germany's economy insignificant?
More interestingly, there are only three nations (the US, China, Japan) with higher GDP. So, by the same criterion, we could argue that only these three countries have any significant economy (total $40.733T), and the rest can be ignored. But then we will be ignoring more than half of global economy! It's clearly a logical fallacy.
* Numbers taken from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nomi...
Also, it seems intuitively obvious that moving N kg by plane is vastly less efficient than other forms of transport like rail or ocean shipping. We should be doing fewer energy-inefficient things and more efficient things.